Ark v2.1 is a minor update, backward compatible with v2.0.X. This update introduces a complete rewrite to TypeScript, which allows for static type-checking along with the latest ECMAScript features. TypeScript is also a much stricter language than JavaScript and lets us spot mistakes that could otherwise go unnoticed. It is more convenient to use and allows for quicker error debugging. For core developers, very little has changed as the syntax is almost the same as JavaScript (Typescript is a superset of JavaScript).

TypeScript makes perfect sense for growing projects that need to scale and have a variety of contributing developers. With this update, we lay the foundation for more technical changes.

We recommend staying on the latest version of Ark; however, this upgrade does not break any APIs, thus v2.0 nodes are still able to join the network. Development on v2.0 has ceased in favor of the newer Typescript version.

Upgrade time: low - upgrading to v2.1 does not break any APIs and can be performed incrementally in the network.

Complexity: low - the internal blockchain representation is not altered.

Risk: low - v2.1 is backward compatible with v2.0; thus a downgrade is possible at any moment.